Activity Monitor -- What shouldn't be there?

[neoelectronaut]

I saw someone mention in another thread that sometimes apps can leave behind stuff that screws with you performance, and can be seen in the activity monitor. How do I know what shouldn't be in my activity monitor?

[Chaszmyr]

I don't think there is any easy way to know what shouldn't be there unless you know what should. Just make sure that nothing that you don't recognize is using a lot of resources.

[cb911]

i was trying to find this out as well, and it seems that if you don't have a good knowlege of what processes the OS uses it's not very useful to try and find rogue processes.

you could always just quit a process, and see if it was on used by the system. :p

[bousozoku]

Try looking at the Activity Monitor after a restart, prior to starting any applications.

Then, start an application and note the changes. To be precise, you should start the whole process again for each application.